It's 5:02 Somewhere and Always They Are Beginning
by TrekInTandem
Summary: After Trenzalore, again after Darillium, the Doctor thinks he's all out of days with River Song, but she's a complicated space-time event, her very existence dependent on a Gordian knot of paradoxes, one spiraling into the next like a transdimensional nesting doll that's bigger on the inside & contains itself. And always, when he expects it the least...when he needs her the most...


The Library in 5011 is not a fixed point.

There are, roughly speaking, a million ways to rewrite the day of River Song's death, a million ways the story could go differently.

He could stop the Library ever being built, for one thing. Or he could make them find a different source of pulp for all those books. He could simply burn the forests of the vashta nerada to ash before anyone ever thinks of building the Library. Then he could irradiate the planet, just to make absolutely sure.

And that's just for starters. Just the first, most obvious ways he thought of to make the events of that day unhappen.

There's also all the ways he could make sure River never goes to the Library that day.

It's not a fixed point.

But if he'd not met her there, if River Song had not cleared her visor and flashed that smile and a "Hello, sweetie," then when he found the _Byzantium's_ home box in the Delirium Archives, assuming he still did, its message would have meant nothing to him. The Old High Gallifreyan it was written in might have still made him wonder enough to nick the box. Probably would have. Almost certainly would have. But there's that narrow gap of the _almost_ between probable and certain, and slim as it is, it's too much to risk.

He doesn't _dare_.

If not the Library, then not the _Byzantium_ (perhaps), and if he hasn't met River Song yet, then 50-foot letters spelling out _HELLO SWEETIE_ in a language only River and the TARDIS speak are nothing but a curiosity, just one more little oddity of the universe he will never understand—and will probably have forgotten by the next day.

So, then there's no trip to Britain in 102 AD. No trap out of legend springing closed beneath Stonehenge—or at least it gets him some other way, some other time, when there is no River Song on hand to leave her vortex manipulator conveniently accessible and then fly his TARDIS to 2010. There's no River to co-opt a Roman legion and then bring Rory back to his Amelia so he can guard her—and the Pandorica—for the next two millennia and so there's no Rory to let him out of the trap if that's when it does spring closed. Rory remains erased from existence without River.

And without River, when his TARDIS is hijacked, it's _him_ inside, and there's no one to pull him out, no way for anyone to get to him without River's manipulator. And probably no Pandorica present with which to reseed the universe even if he could get out—and without River's manipulator, there'd be no way to get the Pandorica into the exploding TARDIS anyway.

And even if the universe somehow survived that attempt on his life, there's the fact that, without Rory in it—the _original_ Rory, brought back into existence when the universe reset—River Song would never have been born.

If there's no River in second-century Britain, there's _no River._

(The number of ways in which River Song has ensured her own existence is astonishing really.

He was wrong, _so_ wrong, that time he dismissed her complexity as a space-time event.

He's had several hundred more years of time travel, give or take a few centuries, to give him the advantage, but he's not at all sure these days that River isn't a _more_ complicated space-time event than even he.

Her very existence, her conception itself, depends on a Gordian knot of paradoxes, one spiraling into the next, like a transdimensional nesting doll that's bigger on the inside and contains itself.

If no Rory, then no River, but it was River's own actions that resulted in Rory's renewed existence—not to mention the universe's.

If no Doctor-in-the-TARDIS (if he is instead trapped in the exploding TARDIS or in the Pandorica—or in the Never Space when the universe resets), then there is no _wedding night_ for the Ponds aboard the TARDIS, and thus, again, no River. But it was River, on hand with her ancient, blue, blank, temporarily _brand new_ diary, that had ensured _his_ return toexistence—and thus her own. Again.

It had even been River, in her Mels face, who made sure Amy and Rory became a couple in the first place.)

Then there's Lake Silencio to consider.

If not the _Byzantium_ and not Stonehenge in 102 followed by London in 2010, there's no guarantee that either he or River would have ever made it to Utah in 2011. After all, without those first chapters, maybe none of the adventures he and River had shared _after_ the Pandorica, all those nights of running with her while the Ponds slept, would have happened. And her presence in Utah had depended on his _future_ relationship with her, one that might not have even begun had he not done Britain, 102, and _his_ presence in Utah (the first time) had depended on _her_.

Because without River to give him the clues of space, 1969, and Canton Three, he would not have added them up and got Washington D.C., and without River, nothing would have motivated Amy to convince him to go to 1969.

And they would never have gone on to Cape Canaveral in response to the cry for help (River _again_ ), and he would not have learned about the Silence or the girl in the spacesuit in the first place; therefore, he would never have later arranged to send his younger self to America to learn about them—would not have brought him to Utah in 2011, let alone have brought River Song there to make sure he went to 1969.

No Utah, _either time_. QED.

And that would have meant no three months in 1969 America. No first farewell kiss. And later (for him), no battlefield wedding atop a pyramid at every moment at once.

There's one more way he might have missed Utah if not for River. He never would have been in Berlin if not for Mels, and if he hadn't, then he would not have learned about Lake Silencio and the date of his death from the Teselecta's database. He would not have known he had to be there by the lake in Utah.

And Utah _matters_. Not just to the universe because it's a fixed point and rewriting it would destroy reality. But also to him, to her, to _them_ , because it's where, for River, he and she _really_ begin. If Utah doesn't happen for River the first time, maybe none of the rest of their story happens.

Their lives are ludicrously circular. He needs to marry her the first time she does Utah so that they begin for her and she will in turn, someday, make sure he meets her for the first time; he needs to know and love her before he does Utah the second time so that he will marry her when he realizes that, even then, almost brand new, she already loves him too.

Similarly, if he _had_ gone to Berlin with Mels but he and River had not already begun for _him_ by then, for any of the foregoing reasons, then it would have been a different man who faced the Silence's assassin. He would have been more concerned with dying than with protecting his murderer, Pond or not, instead of the other way around, and that would surely have guaranteed that he haddied there and then.

Because, had he not chased after her even though she'd killed him, River Song would not have been there to save him.

He had tried to work it out for centuries, but the timelines are far too tangled to pick out any one thread without risking the whole thing unraveling, and while he never did _actually_ promise her not to do that, he has no intention of not honoring her wish (her _dying_ wish) or her choice. Even then, even knowing where it ultimately led, she'd made the same choice again. Even then, she'd chosen him. Chosen _them_.

Were it not for that, he might have rewritten it all, given her up to save her. Not because he's noble or self-sacrificing; he knows he isn't, not when it comes to having River Song in his life. He selfishly would just rather have her alive and out there somewhere than have to endure losing her and knowing she sacrificed herself for him.

He might have rewritten it all, but she forbade it, and so he didn't _dare_. Instead, for a long time, he clung to the comfort of the fact that it was ultimately River's decision rather than his. He didn't really have any other option, he'd tell himself, when the guilt of knowing her end threatened to overshadow their time together. It was—had been, would be— _her_ choice

But then, sometime between 1969 and Demons Run, he'd come to understand her choice, if not come quite so far as acceptance that she'd make it for _him_.

By the time she killed him in Berlin, when he was dead already but just hadn't stopped breathing yet, he had long known that he would be glad to die in exchange for the too fleeting centuries he'd had with her, for even just a few short years with her. In Berlin, he was content to die if he could have just one more moment with River Song, any version of her.

So he understands her choice now, now that he'd make the same one. It's not her choice. It's _their_ choice.

They _have_ to begin, anything else is unacceptable, but in their beginning is their end. For them to begin, she has to end. He has to lose her.

Or so it has to _seem_ to the younger him.

-x-

He's spent the last few centuries, since he gave up on unwriting that day in the Library, planning how to do it, how to fake River's death as they'd once faked his.

But then, a few weeks after he finally acknowledges that he can see her on Trenzalore and she stops haunting him, River Song turns up.

He thought he'd used up all his days with a living, breathing River Song, save one, save the last.

But then, just as it ever was, there she is suddenly, when he least expects it, grabbing his hand and running beside him. After pulling him out of the line of fire.

They save another planet from invasion, get arrested, escape their cell, and are in the middle of breaking out of the collaborators' base when River slips a hand into the satchel on her belt and pulls out a sonic screwdriver— _her_ sonic screwdriver.

The same one he's been carrying in his pocket for years, just in case someday he can't avoid Darillium one more time.

Fake or not, when River dies in the Library, there has to be a screwdriver with her consciousness saved to it for his previous face to upload into the database.

For one thing, several good people would have died at Trenzalore without that psychic echo of River there to save his friends for him. Then the Great Intelligence probably would have just killed _him_ , too, if he hadn't been able to get inside the TARDIS to his timestream.

And if he had died then, he wouldn't be around now to go back to the Library and fake her death.

So there has to be a screwdriver, and so there is, but it's still in his pocket _and it's also in her hand._

She has to drag him bodily through the door she's soniced open, he's so shocked. And it's a good thing his feet remember how to run on their own when River again takes off with his hand in hers because his brain is _busy_.

When they make it into the TARDIS, he's telling himself that just because Darillium was the last time she saw him before the Library, it doesn't mean she didn't have a lot of days in between it and the Library, days when she was carrying that screwdriver. This must be one of those days.

But his thoughts keep running into the brick wall that is the fact that she's indisputably _seeing him_ right now. No doubt about it. Can't save someone's life and then save a planet with them and get arrested and break out and drag them back to the TARDIS without _seeing_ them. Nope. Not possible.

Had she _lied_ about Darillium? Or . . . she'd _said_ the last time she saw him, but maybe she _meant_ the last time he'd seen her, the latest him she'd seen . . .?

She's dropped his hand and left him standing just inside the door, not bothering to haul him along to the console with her, where she's already throwing the lever to take them into the vortex.

Entry is smooth, it always is with River at the controls, but he staggers and clutches the railings on either side of him to keep from collapsing to the floor.

River looks up from the console, smiling at another successful adventure handily escaped, but the smile turns to concern when she sees him all but doubled over, gripping the railings. She starts toward him. "What's wrong?"

He can't speak. He pries one hand from its railing, sagging against the other to stay (mostly) upright, and reaches into his pocket.

He brings out her sonic screwdriver, the one he hasn't given her yet. The one she's already got.

River stops when she sees it, still a couple of feet away.

" _Oh_ ," she says. "I see. _Spoilers_." The way her eyes twinkle as she says it, he'd know she doesn't mean it when she adds, "Oops," even if she didn't sound so utterly unrepentant. The smile turns into her Isn't-breaking -rules- _fun_ grin and _obviously_ she'd been aware all along that using that screwdriver was a whopping great spoiler and had deliberately done it anyway.

"River," he manages weakly.

She takes pity on him and reaches her hands out to take hold of him, and the next thing he knows, he's in her arms, cradled against her, clinging to her for dear life.

She's too _knowing_ for him to assume she believes all this—this _reaction_ is over a little spoiler like her having a gift before he's given it to her. Not like _that's_ never happened before.

No, she _understands_ why he's coming unglued. She's _done_ the Library.

"It—it worked then. It's going to work," he babbles into her hair.

"The neural relay in the screwdriver? Yes, of course," she says, hands rubbing over his back soothingly. "But you must have known that already, sweetie." A hint of perplexity entering her voice now.

"No, no—I mean the _other_ thing. I got—I get you _out_. _You_ you, the real you. Before the data transfer."

She pulls back enough to look at him, brow slightly furrowed. Then her face clears, and she laughs. "Oh, I _see_."

"What?" He shakes his head. "It _works_ then? There's no use trying not to spoil me. I've _seen_ the screwdriver, River. I've seen you—you _after_ the Library!" He claps his hands and then grabs her up, spinning around with her in his arms. "Oh, River!"

He loosens his grip so her feet slide back to the floor and presses his hands to her cheeks instead, holding her face and staring into it delightedly. She stares back as if she's just as awed, for some reason, at the sight of him.

"You were planning a way to rescue me. All those years," she says wonderingly, "you never _intended_ to—Oh, you _sentimental_ old _idiot_!" She covers his hands with hers, pressing them against her face, and he's surprised to see tears suddenly standing in her eyes.

"Of cour—but why do you say it like it's news?" He frees his hands and takes hold of hers, leaning in so they are almost nose to nose. "River?"

"Well." She swallows and sniffs a bit. "Well. I don't suppose you'll accept _spoilers_ , will you? No, not at this point." She pulls away and turns, pacing a few steps before turning back. "I didn't know _you_ had a plan, sweetie. When you didn't come back, well, I didn't want to spend eternity in a computer . . ." He can see her throat work as she swallows. "I do have a reputation for escaping to maintain." She lifts a shoulder and then spreads her hands. "So here I am."

He's standing before her again and holding her hands against his chest in a heartbeat. "You saved yourself," he murmurs, realizing. He grabs her up into another hug. "You saved yourself!" he exclaims, laughing. "Before I could! Oh, my clever, impossible, _amazing_ River Song! You genius!" He draws back so he can see her face, still holding her body solidly against his. "How did you do it?!"

She grins, her eyes shining wetly again. "Spoilers."

The sound he makes is half scream, half growl; half frustration and half amused delight at the familiarity of this frustration. Why, he's almost _missed_ it. "No! No more spoilers! Not _now._ "

Her smile fades somewhat, expression turning serious. "'Fraid so, darling. I've said all I can. You see, I've already told another you all about it."

"Tell me and I—I'll pretend later that I don't already know."

She laughs. "You're not _that_ good an actor." Then she sobers. "Sorry. But I can't risk it possibly mattering that you don't know until later."

"I'm a _brilliant_ actor. I once convinced a bunch of Daleks that a _Jammie Dodger_ was the TARDIS' self-destruct button."

"Oh, I _know_ —you've only told me about it three dozen times—and yes, you do have your moments when you _are_ rather brilliant, dear, I'll admit, _but_ —do you really think you could fool _me_?"

He deflates a bit—and then smiles because it is impossible _not_ to smile at how _bloody brilliant_ his wife is, even if it means that, _no_ , he _couldn't_ fool her. He holds up his hands in concession, backing off a step. "Fine."

Then immediately, he steps forward and wraps his arms around her again, holding her tightly, pressing his face to her neck through the wild springiness of her hair. "Oh, I don't even _care_ how. It's enough that you've done it, enough to have you back. That—! _River_ , it's _every_ thing."

"No." She strokes her fingers over his jaw and cheekbone and then with just the slightest pressure brings his head up to meet his eyes. "Everything is knowing that you were coming back for me." Her fingertips urge his face down to hers and she brings their mouths together. Not a first or a last, just somewhere in the middle of the best part.

-x-

In between his Wednesday afternoon adventures with Clara and her pop-ins to the 51st century for lectures and faculty meetings and exams and expeditions, there is all of time and space, everything that ever was or will be, and best of all, lots and _lots_ of holding hands and running. Well, that's not _quite_ the best of _all_ , but it's a close second. Definitely at least his _third_ favorite thing, probably.

Somewhere along the way, he pops out to pick up Clara for a week in Mesopotamia. River is certain she's pinpointed the location of the perhaps-mythical Hanging Gardens of Babylon—she likes to do it the hard way rather than _cheat_ (her word) and _then_ go backto see if she's right. She's assured him that the name _land between two rivers_ has nothing to do with her—any two hers—reminding him that there are two actual rivers of the watery sort from which the name comes, and has suggested that, as there'll almost certainly be no uprising, military coup, or even an alien invasion at the time they're going to, it'd be a perfect trip to bring Clara along on.

Although he can't think why it would matter to Clara (why, she hardly knew River), River says his companion deserves to know that his dead wife isn't so dead anymore. She says one of these days something might come up and a visit to Clara might not coincide with one of her drop-ins on her life in progress in the 51st century—best for it not to be a surprise in that case, she says: Clara needs to know. He figures out from her tone that she thinks Clara will be _angry_ if he collects her at some point and River is present and she didn't _know_ in advance that he still has a wife, a living, breathing one that is, and yes, now that he thinks about it, that seems, well, _likely_ , really. _Quite_ likely.

So, he invites Clara along to ancient Mesopotamia.

It probably _would_ have been the perfect trip, too, but he ends up in Elizabethan England with two of his former selves and then saves Gallifrey instead.

Clara insists on going home after that, as if her afternoon in the National Gallery and Black Archive was _so_ strenuous (she hadn't even left the planet except for that _tiny_ sidetrip to Gallifrey!), so he and River do the Hanging Gardens on their own. (She was right about the location. Of course.)

He talks her into getting married again while they're there because, he argues, a _mountain_ of gardens and forests built on a plain in a _desert_ out of love for your homesick queen is just too romantic a locale _not_ to get married in, and anyway, it's the _only_ wonder of the original Seven Wonders of the World that they _haven't_ gotten married in.

And really he doesn't have to actually _talk_ her into it _exactly_. When he makes his case, she just smiles and says, "And why do you think I've proved it existed and found it for us? Now, was there something you wanted to _ask_ me, sweetie?"

Time is wibbly wobbly, and the universe is vast and complicated and ridiculous, but for a long, long time, for the longest time yet in their long lives, they are sweetly, simply _linear_ , running together in the same direction, though hardly in a straight line.

Then one day he goes off to investigate a mysterious message while River is popping in on the slow path—and runs smack into Trenzalore again.

For years, he expects River to arrive at any moment, having missed him when he didn't show up where he was supposed to and tracked him down to see what's keeping him—and to rescue him from it, as needed.

She'll come and they'll figure a way out of this siege. No one else has managed it—certainly not him—but what _can't_ he do with River Song at his side.

But she doesn't come.

Every day for 500 years, give or take, he reminds himself that time is wibbly wobbly. The River he failed to meet as planned will arrive in a crackle of vortex energy any moment (for the first 300, he's sure she'll bring his bloody tardy TARDIS with her), tapping her foot and looking at her watch, not yet knowing that this time _she's_ the one who's late, terribly, terribly late . . .

Any moment. Any day now.

In a last burst of denial, he convinces himself that when he hadn't shown up, she'd felt a bit _relieved_ to be free to live her own life without constantly rushing off with him hither and yon. Even River Song might get tired of running eventually—well, okay, probably not, but she might at least get tired of him. And so she'd just kept to the slow path, waiting at first—expecting him to show up eventually—but then never thinking to go look for him, instead just forgetting at last the mad old man in the box who had ruined her childhood and married her without permission only to bang her up in jail for 12,000 consecutive life sentences and had then lost her parents and had finally left her like a book on a shelf in a computer database from which she'd had to save herself because _he_ never came back. Now he'd not come back one too many times, and River had run on without him. Maybe she'd met someone else—someone younger, someone prettier, someone with a grownup face, someone _easier_ , someone who didn't laugh at archeology and never went out for five minutes and came back a month later, maybe someone who didn't find herself in danger of dying once a week and never wore hats or needed her to run to the rescue and kill all the people he couldn't, someone who hadn't lost her when she was a baby or lost her parents or made her pretend to be a murderer even though she was his savior. Someone as strong as she was from whom she'd never have to hide anything, not damage, certainly not spoilers.

Then one day he realizes (accepts) that she must be dead. _Really_ dead this time. Nothing else would have kept River Song from getting to him eventually. Not even one or more of the various imaginary perfect spouses he's dreamt up for her. He hadn't even really thought _death_ could ever stop her, not his indestructible River Song, not since she turned up again and was after the Library.

Maybe she'd tried getting through the siege (of _course_ she had) and they'd actually gotten her. The Daleks or the Cybermen or even the blasted Church (wouldn't _that_ beat all, for the Church that had stolen her and trained her to kill him and then locked her away to finally get her in the end—and when they're actually on his side at that).

Unlike him, she's never late, always hits when she's aiming for, and once she'd located him, she would have come to a point on his timeline immediately after he was stuck there. So.

She's been dead for _centuries_. His River.

He's ready for it to end then, but it takes a very, very long time for a time lord to die on his own, and he can't _let_ himself be killed by one of the many adversaries who'd be glad to end him because he's the only thing protecting the people of Christmas. He has a duty of care, no matter how tired he is of living.

At last, the day comes when he's so old and weak that there's really nothing he can do to stop them this time, or so he thinks, but a thing happens.

He regenerates—a thirteenth face, the rules rewritten, the planet saved.

And he forgets.

-x-

He remembers he has a duty of care.

He remembers that Gallifrey was not destroyed—lost, but not destroyed.

In time, he remembers most of what he needs to know to function on a daily basis: how to fly the TARDIS, that the not-me one asking-questions one who isn't Handles is his companion Clara—and how to distinguish her with even just one glance from one of the seven dwarfs or a Sontaran.

He remembers that _Clara_ doesn't send him cryptic messages by outrageously convoluted means for a lark even though he has perfectly good psychic paper in his pocket.

He remembers that he's not her boyfriend.

He even remembers, after a few false starts, that he _does_ interfere, that he _saves_ people where and when he can. He remembers where he's seen this face before.

He knows who he is again, mostly. There's just one or two things he's still not quite clear about. For instance, is he a _good_ man?

Eventually he decides that he had _never_ known the answer to that one, at least not in any of his recent faces, so _that_ 's all right then.

Then he loses Clara—and gets her back, a few billion years later, only to realize that one of them has got to go. One psychopath per TARDIS. It's a _rule_ , isn't it? He remembers that much, if he can't quite remember making that one.

He forgets Clara again. Not just her name but all of her.

He wakes up in some American desert without the TARDIS.

Looking for his box, he puts together the shape of the recent blanks in his mind, an outline of a missing piece called Clara, and then he looks for _her_ , starting back in the desert again.

He doesn't find Clara, just a waitress he might have invited to travel with him if he'd had all of time and space to offer. She's a good listener. And she says that maybe sometimes memories become not stories but _songs_. He likes that. Even the word is a good word, the way the shape of it fits in his mind. _Song_.

But he still hasn't found his TARDIS, so he doesn't ask her, and then she's gone. In fact, the whole bloody diner is _gone_ , and he's standing in the bloody desert again.

He recognizes a dematerializing TARDIS when it disappears around him, if not one when he's standing right inside it, and he understands now because he's pieced the story together, hasn't he, that this was the TARDIS he _borrowed_ from Gallifrey—well, the _other_ TARDIS he borrowed from Gallifrey, the second one—and that the waitress _has_ to have been either Clara or the immortal one that calls herself Me, as if _names_ aren't hard enough.

 _Probably_ Clara.

Sneaking around in disguise to check on him is a _companiony_ thing to do.

But as she's gone now, that means she's sticking to the arrangement, then, so he supposes he'd better, too, since it was his idea. She's all right, apparently—alive and unlikely to die of natural causes any time in . . . well, ever, and flying about in her own space-time machine, to boot, so he's done his duty by her. She's survived him and come out the other side better off than he's left a lot of his friends. Back to running alone then.

Fortunately—maybe he's passed some sort of test—his own beautiful blue box is standing right beside him, though someone has covered her in graffiti, flowers and that waitress'— _Clara's_ —face.

Not _exactly_ abiding by the arrangement, then—and does she think he's thick, couldn't work it out for himself without her literally drawing him a picture?

Definitely companiony behavior. He bets he liked this one. Well, too bad. He likes them all. Then they go.

Inside, the chalkboard has been scrawled on too. _Run, you clever boy, and be a Doctor._

He does.

Thanks to the TARDIS-diner, he's remembered his Ponds now. His beautiful _Ponds_. He'd more than liked them. Not just people, those two, but _Ponds._ The girl who waited and the last centurion, with whom he'd once sat in that very diner. Well, in the _real_ one. (Never ignore a coincidence—unless you really want to.) How could he have _forgotten_ Amy and Rory?

When he remembers _why_ he'd forgotten them, how he lost them, when he'd tried _so hard_ to keep them safe and draw out their days over centuries of his own so he'd never have to stand over their graves, he tries to stop running (to run in a different way at least), to hole up in the vortex, but it's Christmas. At least, it's Christmas everywhere the TARDIS wants to go. He gives up on the vortex and tries some coordinates of his own, but no, Christmas, always Christmas, everywhere she deigns to land. No amount of railing or pleading or rewiring does any good. Not for him anyway. Unless you count singed fingers, which he doesn't as they're no good at all. At least the lizardy ones got something out of it. Too bad about their piano.

Finally, he gives up, doesn't try flying off to a different destination, let alone attempt again his original intention to be nowhere and nowhen. He settles for locking himself inside the TARDIS right there where she's landed on Mendorax Dellora. Where it's Christmas. What _is_ it with the old girl and _Christmas_ all of a sudden?

He knows she's trying to cheer him up, but he doesn't _like_ Christmas, not anymore, not in this face.

After the fourth time he opens the door to find another group of carolers opening their mouths and drawing in deep breaths, he slams the door in their faces and then writes a _sternly_ worded discouraging note, which he sticks on the door—but only once he's sure that last lot has gone, no sign they're waiting to ambush him, and the street is temporarily quiet. And safe. From carolers anyway. For once, he used the scanner to _check._

For a while, the note seems to work.

-x-

 _Have I got anything on my head?_

 _Er, well, yes._

 _Describe it._

-x-

He's remembered the Ponds, but he hasn't yet remembered the _real_ reason he'd forgotten how he lost them, why he _had_ to forget them _entirely_ for a while.

In other words, he doesn't yet remember River Song when the woman in the red, fur-trimmed Mrs. Claus cloak (what _is_ it with humans and Christmas? he thinks at the sight. And how did his TARDIS catch it?), the woman who needs a doctor—well, a _surgeon_ , but why quibble—walks down the ramp of the ship to meet him.

There's something about her voice, but he doesn't give it any thought—not until she criticizes his suit.

 _It's not_ even _a suit._

 _Do I know you?_

 _You most certainly do not._

Then she throws back her hood, and _now_ he remembers. He remembers why this face is old. He remembers why it doesn't like Christmas. He remembers why he didn't remember making that rule about the number of lunatics on the TARDIS. He remembers why he preferred sonic sunglasses after he lost his last screwdriver. He remembers why he has the ring that never leaves his finger. He remembers why he doesn't like hats this go round, how he'd hated having every one of his hats _killed_ for all those years and how then when there was _no_ _chance_ she'd show up and shoot it, he suddenly couldn't bear to wear one anymore. He remembers everything.

It's all there in his mind in an instant—the Library, his first kiss, _her_ first kiss, spoilers and running hand in hand and mad plans and things that weren't even plans and even madder escapes, her shoes hanging on his console, his bowtie wrapped around the hand in his ridiculous hair, their first wedding atop the Great Pyramid (oldest Wonder of the World, her world) at every moment at once, every time he caught her, every time _she_ caught _him_ , coordinates to everywhere scattered all over time and space that always only ever brought him _home_ , their _last_ wedding, another impromptu handfasting at the Mausoleum of Mausolus (because it was another Wonder and because, oh, she _did_ love a tomb, his bad, bad girl), and Manhattan— _and_ Trenzalore—their _last_ kiss and then River telling him how to say goodbye, guiding him through even that, because he'd _never_ known how he ever could, not to her.

All their firsts and lasts and middles. _All_ their days. All there.

"River!" Suddenly he's not sure this face has ever _really_ smiled before this moment. He certainly didn't think it was the _beaming_ type.

He had thought he was out of days. He'd thought, after she faded away on Trenzalore and had ceased haunting his every step, that even the ghost of her had left him forever. He'd _meant_ to go back to the Library for her— _why had he never done that?_

But she's _here_ now—right _now_. Right in front of him. For the first time in a thousand years and more. (Closer to five billion if he counted _properly_ , which he rarely does.) For the first time in a very long time, anyway, he's standing in front of his wife, and he _knows_ her, of course he does. He was such a coward to ever forget his mad, brilliant River Song. His very own bespoke psychopath. His _wife!_

He thinks she's pretending when she acts like she doesn't know him, that she has her reasons. Then he thinks she's been having him on—all this sickening, over-the-top "my one true love, the only husband I will ever have" business.

Hydroflax is her _third_ at least, and that's not counting wives.

He meets Ramone.

Make that fourth—at _least._

-x-

 _Oh, how many_ times _? I married the_ diamond _._

 _So you say._

-x-

It takes him roughly twenty-five years, by one way of reckoning, to realize what the diamond was _for_. Not for selling to the highest bidder, at least not for keeps. Not for returning to the Halassi.

To be fair, for the first twenty-four, he _was_ distracted by other things.

The Halassi Androvar, one of the four intuitive gems of the Apocalypse Monks of the Andorax. He'd always thought those were a myth—or at least that their powers were. The monks had guarded _something_ for a thousand years before Andorax (the capital city, not the planet) was razed to the ground to take it from them. Since then, in the legends that have grown up around the stones, they've each had many names—Halassi Androvar is one.

Now he knows what the Androvar was _for_ , and all she'd said, when she'd asked and he'd told her what he'd done with it, all she'd said was "Never mind. It's a _lovely_ restaurant."

When he realizes, the diamond is gone. He doesn't understand it. Alphonse is happy to direct him to his buyer, and he's sure his old friend wasn't lying but also sure the buyer really does _not_ have the first idea what he's on about. Just like that, the Halassi Androvar is lost in the mists of time again.

It takes a while to find another one. Yes—a _while_. He's not counting units of time any more _at all_ if he can help it. He's had to count too much, too carefully, recently. He _hates_ counting.

But eventually, he locates one of them, the Ghost of Love and Wishes. Of _course_ , he thinks. It would be _that_ one.

With it, he can untangle the crumple of timelines, smooth out the distortions, around 1930s New York and go back for his Ponds at last. River's last gift to him. The gift she'd originally meant for the broken other him she'd last left brooding on a cloud, in a place and time where he would have a few carers handy to mind him while she was away.

But then he loses the stone. Stupid, _careless_ Doctor. At least he understands now how a gemstone can just go missing like it never existed—well, _sort_ of. Not that it does him any good.

Or Grant. What's happened to the boy is his fault. Once again, he's dropped into a child's life and up-ended it, taken them out of the normal course of things. This one, he promises himself, he'll look after better than the last.

-x-

 _Grant—Grant, this is insane. Look, I'm_ me _, the Doctor, and even I think this is insane.  
I can cope._

 _Of course you can't! When do you sleep? When are you_ not _on call?_

 _. . . there are some situations which are just too stupid to be allowed to continue._

 _Grant, you are jealous of_ you _!_

 _Technically, she's jealous of her._

 _Grant, how long have you known this woman?_

 _Since elementary school. Twenty-four years._

 _Twenty-four years? Yeah, of course. It_ would _be that, wouldn't it._

 _Are you okay?_

 _Time passes for everyone. Even for me. So, please, as much as it is possible for a human male,_ try not to be an idiot.

 _No, seriously, are you okay?_

 _I'm always okay._

 _So, no more Ghost, then?  
Nah, laid to rest.  
Are you sure?  
Yeah, of course I'm sure. I mean, life's not a comic book, right, Doctor?  
Possibly I'm not the right person to ask.  
What if something happens? What if the whole world is in danger?  
Well, you know, maybe I'll keep the outfit, then. You know, just in case.  
The world will be fine. I've been away for a while, but I'm back. I'll take care of anything that comes up. Be happy. I'll look after everything else._

-x-

And he does look after the boy. Even when the boy is a man, he checks in every few years. After the Harmony Shoal incident, it all goes smoothly enough for him and the family he builds. As smoothly as life ever does. He might even call it happy-ever-after. No, it's not perfect and it's certainly not forever, but happy-ever-after, he's long since come to understand, never was either one.

The Harmony Shoal though. _Again_.

Throw in one of the intuitive gems, and there they are. They turn up just like a great lot of quacking ducks turn up when you're trying to eat a sandwich. Or—no—what's that other thing that turns up for breadcrumbs? Wet, scaly, swimming-about things, gill-breathers the lot of 'em—you'd think they didn't even have proper noses—ah, right— _don't_ have proper noses, travel in packs, underwater packs or something or other, groups anyway, _schools_ it's called when they all swim one way together but something else the rest of the time when they're just hanging about, terrible conversationalists, always coming with vinegar or lemon or dill instead of custard, almost never turn up with custard—though why would you want them to? Bleh. But never mind! As breadcrumbs are to that lot, so the gems are to the Harmony Shoal. That's certainly no coincidence.

Never ignore a coincidence. Unless you really want to. Or you're busy, of course. That's a good one.

And he's sure he must be busy. Planets to save, conversations to not have.

And _also_ the _Library_. Why _did_ he never get 'round to _that_?

It'll work, his plan; he's _sure_ of it. Isn't he?

Grant's all squared away, and as he's always said there's no time like the present. Well, he _must_ have said it at least _once_. After all, he's 2300—he _was_ 2300 (four and a half—no, closer to five—billion) years old when he stopped counting (well, he's _some_ age or other, anyway; he isn't counting anymore and no one can make him), and he's _always_ saying some stupid thing or other.

-x-

He's on his way. Really, he is. He's certainly not procrastinating—it's a _time machine_ , after all, it doesn't _matter_ when he leaves—and it's definitely going to work, almost certainly definitely going to work, and so why _would_ he be?

He's even dropped Nardole off home for a bit—well, in twelfth-century Constantinople, anyway, but it's where the man had _requested_ so it still _counts_ —so he can have his wife all to himself again for a while once it works. Also, she's going to be _cross_ about that _backup_ , how he ran about letting her wraith tag at his heels all those years—never even meeting her eyes, too afraid she'd turn out to be the delusion of a grief-mad brain if he did—instead of fetching Herself from the Library, he's pretty sure of it, and he really doesn't want to grovel in front of the companion. Besides, Nardole would probably take her side. People tend to ( _and_ robots—he remembers that android boyfriend he built just fine, more's the pity), at least when they're not trying to kill her. And Nardole, Mr. It's-Dr.-Song-to- _you_ , has always liked River best.

He's going, but in the meantime, there are vaults to guard, planets to save, and _bloody_ hell, papers to grade.

Right now, though, he's on Calderon Beta. The night of the twenty- _second_ of September 2360. He really _is_ a nostalgic idiot. _Again_. But even so, it's not the night with the most stars ever visible in one sky. That night is just for the two of them, just for her, just for River. Always was. Never went in for _that_ sort of thing before her. He's always liked impressing them, all his friends, but there wasn't any _point_ in standing about on the dirt gazing up at the stars, even at a whole whopping lot of them, when he could be hopping through them like an intergalactic hopscotch champ (rubbish simile, never saying that, never even _thinking_ that again). And after her, he'd never have taken anyone else _but_ her, not to the moment where they'd celebrated their wedding night. Begun to celebrate it, anyway.

Today, he couldn't even bring himself to go there on his own without her, not to that exact moment, but he had wanted to be close to it, close to her.

And here and now he's closer to her than he's been in quite a while. The rotational period is short on Calderon Beta, so even though the planet's nearly finished a complete rotation since 21 September, 12 minutes to midnight, it's only been a few hours. He's mere _hours_ away from her. River Song was _right here_ just six hours ago.

Six hours ago, half a dozen of her were running about the place. She was refusing to wear the dress he'd chosen for her for their wedding night, holding her nearly brand new diary, about to hold his hand for the very first time from her perspective and the millionth or so from his, about to _not_ read a book by the light of all those stars.

She was being shot at by Sontarans and barging into his TARDIS and throwing herself into his arms, holding her breath and scaring him nearly witless just to angle for a kiss as if she'd ever yet had to ask—and _still_ mocking the dress.

She was leading him to the wardrobe and finding the dress and changing into it while he watched, having somehow found him when it was their anniversary for both of them, his 50th and her—well, she never _would_ say—and flown them to that same night to celebrate it. He'd taken the dress off her again under the most stars ever and had read her _skin_ like a book by their light.

She was wearing the dress and snogging him silly in a niche in the great trunk of the tree ( _that_ time it hadn't even been _his_ fault that they never made it to Darillium, no matter what she'd claimed later).

She was wearing her own well-tailored set of tails and the tie she'd married him with, her curls springing out around his top hat, and carefully making up his face for him after having talked him into a longer, narrower version of the dress, even if it _still_ too "daring" for his bony frame. Soon enough the bowtie would be wrapped around both their hands again and then just his and his lipstick would be all over her mouth and throat and chest . . .

Just six hours ago, she was all over this place—all the hers—the woman he first fell in love with, the woman he married, running, laughing, flirting, snogging, screaming, wearing his hat. She was young (but already older than once he'd ever dared to hope), she was older than he once could have imagined, she was older yet, and she was everywhere.

Then she's standing right beside him.

Smiling that _River_ smile as the last crackles of energy disperse.

"Hello, sweetie."

His eyebrows dive together as he gapes. He can't believe he's so fortunate as to have _another_ daywith a younger version of her when he was sure he'd used them all up centuries and centuries ago—and why is that can't-believe-his-luck feeling so _familiar_? Mendorax Dellora—when she threw back that hood and he remembered—yeah, that must be it.

"You're a day late, you know," she says kindly. Belatedly, she looks pointedly and pointlessly at her watch; she already knows exactly when and where she is, as always.

"River?"

She laughs, her head going back a bit as she does, setting off a cascade of red curls around her face. "Oh, that never gets old," she exclaims on the comet tail of her laughter. She raises a brow at him. "You saying my name in that _voice_ , shock-and-awed, like I just dropped out of the sky."

He gathers himself a bit.

"Yes, well, very often that's exactly what you have done," he says acerbically, but he's smiling. Can't be not smiling. "You—you know who I am? What are _you_ _doing_ here?" He means here-on-Calderon-Beta-one-night-late here, a little, but mostly here-when-I'm-all-out-of-days here.

" _Well_ , I don't have to ask when _you_ are, do I?" she quips, sitting beside him where her appearance has stuck him in place. She bumps her shoulder into his. "Not that I needed to anyway."

"Less with the teasing, more with the answering," he insists, circling a hand to demonstrate how she should speed things up.

She gives him her you're-spoiling-my-fun face but relents. "All right." She holds up a finger to tick off her first point and speaks in her talking-to-new-students voice: "Of course I know who you are." The lecturey professor face softens and she abandons her count to stroke her fingertips down his cheek and then cradle his face in her palm. "I know this face _so well_ ," she murmurs, smiling fondly. "I should after 'twenty-four years,'" she adds, and he can hear the familiar verbal quotation marks they'd always used slotting into place as ever. She takes her hand away—his face feels bereft—and holds up two fingers. "There's your second answer: I've _done_ Darillium, my love. And yet—" A third finger. "I'm very much not dead these days."

He's been staring at her open-mouthed since "twenty-four years."

"You—you've—so you're—"

River uncurls another finger and flutters all four of them in front of his face. "After the Library. Yes."

The words might as well echo portentously off the steep shoulders of the little valley, and perhaps they do; they certainly reverberate inside his head, unlocking the last door that grief had nailed shut.

On Trenzalore, during the long siege, he had finally accepted that she was dead, that she'd escaped the Library that had loomed in his mind for centuries as her tomb only to die there at Trenzalore, trying to break through the ranks of all the massed enemies of Gallifrey, to get to him, to save him one more time. No matter how brave, how clever, how _amazing_ River Song was, no matter that she had cheated death or squeezed time itself in the fist of her will and shattered it like an eggshell rather than kill him, in the end, it still wasn't enough, none of it _ever_ would have been, ever _could_ have been enough—because there was _him_. Always him. Loving him was _always_ going to kill her one way or another.

The second loss of her and the realization that he'd doomed her, from start to finish, the child and the woman, had been too much to live with for a whole new lifetime, a whole new series of lifetimes. He'd forgotten. And even when he'd remembered _her_ , that last door had stayed firmly, protectively sealed.

He'd let her go off to the Library after Darillium believing he had a way to _fix it_ , even if secretly he was afraid it wouldn't work. He never could have done that if he'd known that it didn't even matter if he could fix it or not, not because she was going to save herself but because the future River he might save was just going to die all over again in his past, already had. And he'd _had_ to let her go, or they never would have begun.

But the memories are too powerful, too important to stay tucked safely behind their door forever. Confronted with a River who's already after the Library—and is thus already on her way to another death at Trenzalore—he _remembers_.

All those brilliant days at River's side after Trenzalore the first time, when he'd believed they really could run forever. Their actual last wedding in the Hanging Gardens. Everything— _really_ everything this time.

The expectant smile on River's face fades. "Why are you _sad_?" she demands.

He can't do this again. He can't let go of her again or let her throw away her life for him again. Not this time, not this time when the sacrifice won't even _matter_ , won't do any good. And a great feeling of relief comes over him. He doesn't _have_ to, not this time, because nothing that matters will change if she doesn't die at Trenzalore, nothing except _everything_. Not one line of them will be rewritten if she never goes to Trenzalore to rescue him. Instead, a future.

He grabs her hands. "River," he says urgently, "at some point you're going to want to go to Trenzalore to fetch me, _younger_ me—your giddy, besotted, bowtie-wearing numpty—but you mustn't. You understand? You must never, ever go back to Trenzalore. Promise me, River!"

She frees one of her hands to lay it comfortingly over his. She's wearing her concerned face. "I don't—Doctor, are you—is that _foreknowledge_?" She sounds a bit shocked, a bit deliciously scandalized, for a moment, but the worry for him wins out. "What happens at Trenzalore? When? You don't mean the siege—?"

"The siege! You—you know about that? Yes, yes, of course." He answers himself with a vicious shake of his head. He'd told her about it himself that first night on Darillium, explaining how he'd turned up in a face she didn't know. His fault twice over then; she wouldn't have even needed to track him down when he didn't turn up because he'd already _told_ her where he'd been. "You can't save him, River. You'll think you can go back and rewrite it and save your beloved Bowtie—"

"I—"

"—and I don't blame you—no, _listen_ —I understand, River, but you _can't save him_. If you go back, you'll die. You'll never get through. I was _there_ , and you never made it, River—you don't _come_ —you _won't make it_ —and I can't lose you again. You have to promise, River. Promise me!"

She hasn't seen him this unhinged since he read that table of contents in Manhattan, but it's all right—she understands what's wrong now, and this she can fix. His grip is crushing her bones together but she frees herself nonetheless and traps his face firmly between her hands. "Now _you_ listen, Doctor. I'm not going to Trenzalore. I never tried and failed to get to you there, and I _won't_. I didn't go looking because I knew where you were when you didn't come back. I knew where you were going when that message from Gallifrey caught your attention, and I _let you go anyway_. I knew what would happen because I had already spent centuries loving _this_ face. Because you told me about it on Darillium." She gives his head a slight shake. "I've already _done_ all that."

"You—you . . . what? You didn't go back for Bowtie?"

He sounds like he can't fathom it.

She takes her hands away, her posture curving in on itself. "Don't you dare look so shocked, Doctor," she says, lifting her chin defiantly. "I _couldn't._ You should know that! I didn't do anything you haven't done. If I'd interfered on Trenzalore, I'd have unwritten every moment we squeezed out of Darillium—I—I _couldn't_. No more than you could unwrite the Library. I'm not going to apologize for it."

He's already reaching out for her. "No, no, of course not. That's not—I wouldn't want you to be sorry. _River_." He looks down at his thumbs rubbing coaxingly, apologetically over the backs of her hands. "I just—I thought—for him—that you wouldn't give that one up willingly." Calming, he says quietly, "You _broke time_ to save that face for just a little while longer once."

"To save _you_ , you idiot," she says, taking hold of his hands. "The face doesn't matter. How could you think it did? I mean I can see how you might have _wondered_ _once_ , when this face was new, but sweetie . . . all those centuries, our 'twenty-four years' . . . what did I ever do to give you the impression that the face mattered more than the man?"

There was never anything, he knows. He's mucking it all up again. She's above reproach here, and he'll not have her thinking otherwise. "Nothing. You never once acted like you minded, and I was always grateful for it, but I know how much you loved me when I was him. I know you love this me, 'course I do, but he's your—your favorite. Stands to reason. And it's okay, I don't mind—perfectly natural—the man you fell for, the man you married. Of course you'd miss—"

"Shut up," she says warmly, smiling. "You really are an idiot. Did you forget that I _know_ how it works—from the inside out? I'm the same me I was when I was a child in a spacesuit seeing you for the first time without looking through the rubbish eyes of an avatar, the same me I was when I listened to Mum's stories about her Raggedy Doctor, the same me I was when I hijacked you in that cornfield outside Leadworth, and you are the same you who stopped to change into white tie on your way to save me from the Teselecta crew, the same you who took time out from saving a dying universe to marry me, just to assure me that I wasn't going to be the woman who killed you. The same _besotted_ idiot you ever were," she concludes, turning his aspersion against his younger face back on him. Then she gentles her voice, letting it go all soft and low and warm, the way it is wont to do when it's just him and her—or when she's just forgotten anyone else exists. " _My_ Doctor. Always."

"Don't lie," he says gruffly, pretending to refuse to admit he's wrong, ignoring the choked sound of his voice. "You _miss_ your babyface in the bowtie."

"Weell," she drawls, and he loves that twinkle in her eyes, the way they crinkle when she's happy or amused—or flirting. "I do love to _provoke_ you when you're young. You're so adorable when you're pretending you aren't wishing I'd have my wicked way with you right there and then. And it's just _precious_ when you act like you're afraid to touch me because you think if you do you might never stop," she adds smugly.

"I _knew_ it. I could always _tell._ You weren't exactly subtle. Always so satisfied with yourself and _smug_ withit. Infuriating woman."

"You loved it."

He smiles and confesses, "Still do." He wags a finger. "And don't try to pretend _you_ don't love _'provoking'_ this me just as much, every chance you get."

"Oh," she hums, "I _do_." She looks pointedly around the little hanging valley on the mountain in the middle of the sea and at the trunk of the 400-foot tree that curves out over the cliff face. "Don't _you_ try to pretend you're one jot less besotted than the first time I fell out of the sky into your arms."

Elation swirling through him, he brings both hands up and lightly pats the curls to either side of her smile to watch them spring back into place. "It was a starship, as I recall. That first time."

"I remember it _well_ ," she purrs, leaning into him until they are nose to nose—then pulling teasingly away. "But don't you want the rest of your answers, Doctor? Why I'm here?"

"Oh, there was a reason? You didn't just miss last night and whatever version of Bowtie you planned to torment?"

"I'll ignore that as we both know I never miss so I'm here for _this_ you." Her sharp tone gentles on the next words. "I'm here for the man I left on Darillium. I've come to tell you that you can stop your grieving, that you were _wrong._ When I ran into the younger you after I left the Library, I soon realized that on Darillium you hadn't _remembered_ any of those days I was spending with you then. Which meant you really hadn't known when I left that it wasn't the last time. I couldn't figure out why you didn't remember. Now I know," she adds a bit darkly and pauses to take his face between her hands again, her face momentarily pained.

But then she smiles, and her entire face is suffused with such a wealth of feeling that it wrenches every feature just a bit, transforming though hardly marring her _really_ -smiling face; it's like the way too much light blurs the edges in a photograph and makes the image fuzzy, unfocused, but in her face, the altering excess only makes her smile more potent, sharper as it goes through him, stabbing straight through to his hearts.

"Now that you _do_ remember, you should have figured this out by now, but you _can_ be awfully thick sometimes, so listen carefully, dear"—the sharp, bickery tone is back, and oh, he loves it, loves too how it's gone just as quick as her voice turns all warm and sweet so hearing it is like biting into warm fudge—"That wasn't our last night at all, Doctor, not nearly." She brushes her fingers over his cheeks, wiping away the tears he hasn't realized until then that he's crying. And how long has he been doing that exactly? Probably since _you idiot_.

" _Mostly_ I wanted to tell you that you were wrong," she says cheekily. In contrast to her words and tone, there are tears in _her_ eyes now, but the _face_ , the face is all cheerful teasing, though this face too has been transformed into something transcendent by the light of feeling.

Mouth and throat working, he's staring at her like his eyes are anchors and if he looks at her hard enough with them she'll never be able to leave his side. " _Hug_ me, you daft man," she says, and even as she speaks, she's taking his arms and pulling him close, fitting his arms around her body for him.

He clings hard once she's in his arms, and when he does, she holds him just as tightly. He's sure she means to reassure him that nothing will make her let go.

"There now. The two of us together, and everything's all right, hm?" She curls her hand around his neck and then strokes her fingers into the hair at his nape. "I'm not even cross with you for all that 'Times end, River' nonsense—and you standing there with a plan all along, lying to my face. I know now why you said all those stupid things, that you didn't want to give me false hope in case your plan didn't work."

He makes a choked sound against her shoulder and her hand moves up to the back of his head and holds him to her just a bit more closely, letting him hide his face, though he couldn't care less about his damned face, wants only her in his arms, hers around him, the _solidity_ of her, of them.

"I was—pretty sure—I could get you out of there in time without tipping myself off, but . . . " He shakes his head, and having felt her hair brushing against his face, nestles into it for the comfort of it on his skin. "I was _worried_. I'm sorry I made it so hard for you—that night and the last night. I tried to act like nothing was amiss, but, well . . ." Hide his face all he liked, he never had been able to hide from her.

She draws away so they can see each other. "No apologies." She presses her fingers to his face. "Always and completely, Doctor—it works both ways."

He turns his head quickly and kisses her palm before she's had time to pull her hand away. Then he catches it and holds it between his. "The always amazing River Song," he murmurs. "Good was never the word." He clears the lump out of his throat. "How _did_ you do it, then? Get out of the Library."

The way she smiles, he knows what she's going to say as she opens her mouth. "Spoilers."

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding," he scoffs, dropping her hand to throw both of his up in exasperation. "This isn't when you tell me?"

"Not yet. But it's not long off for you."

"And I guess I've got to wait 'til then before you'll stick around for any length of time," he grouses, "because future me is expecting you, hm?" He crosses his arms. "Shacked up with you right off, didn't he?"

" _Hardly_ spoilers. That is what _you_ would do, isn't it? But technically I don't think you can 'shack up' with someone you're married to, and the TARDIS _certainly_ wouldn't appreciate the implication, but you're cute when you're envious of yourself, so never mind." And the way she waves her hand is as imperious and airy as her tone.

"Hmph. Why are you dallying here with this me then?"

"Is that what I'm doing? Dallying? How beautifully quaint. 'Dallying.' But no, we're not _dallying_ , not quite _yet_ , I think." Her voice has suddenly gone all vast with weight, full and deep, not in pitch but with immeasurable fathoms of intimacies shared, all the things only he and she have lived, every look, every touch, every cry, centuries upon centuries of them, sacred and profane.

Her voice, light and teasing, could be skipping along the event horizon of the black hole at the center of the universe, bottomless, infinite, and so heavy with so much time and so many stories lived and secret sublimities shared that it draws and holds galaxies together with its gravity.

He has to clear his throat again but otherwise he ignores for the moment the promise in her voice, the promise that she won't be rushing off right away, the promise of the things she'll do instead, the way his stomach leaps in response at the thought of them, the way she can make him hard with just a mere timbre of her voice. "Let me guess—I told you that you were here so here you are."

She laughs. "It was my own idea, thank you. I had no intention of letting you gad about thinking I was dead for any length of time, no _telling_ what you might get up to, but I found a later you first." Her tone turns apologetic as she goes on. "Even so, I'd have come to find you right after Darillium, but you've hardly been by yourself for more than five minutes since I left you, and I wanted to do this when it could be just the two of us."

"Your own fault. You _insisted—_ hang on, how do you know whether I've been by myself? Oi, are you _spying_ on me? You _are_ , aren't you? Sexy's helping you do it—!"

"Oh, stop it," she interrupts fondly. "Do you really want to argue about that when we could . . ." She tucks her chin and looks up at him through her lashes. "Dally?" The infinite center of the universe yawns deep and endless within the sound of her voice again.

He scowls playfully. "Coy doesn't suit you, wife. Not at your age. How old _are_ you now, anyway?"

She swats his chest. "Oh I think it _does_. As lovely a shade on me as _brazen_. Shall we compare?" The hand lingering near his chest slides down his stomach, finds him through his trousers, curls around his cock. "Had you really rather argue with me instead of seeing how many times you can manage to make me scream before I get you to the bedroom, throw you on the bed, and get you inside me? I rather think I'm due quite a _thorough_ shagging, Doctor. I'm _awfully clever_ after all. Aren't I? What with coming back from the dead. What do you think?"

"I think you're right," he manages, and his voice is choked again but not with tears. "They're both _lovely_ shades. And—you're _very_ clever."

"No arguing then?" She stands and pulls him to his feet.

He immediately tugs her body against his. "I didn't say _that_ , but no, you've got your priorities right—shagging first."

" _Thorough_ shagging." She's started on the buttons of his shirt as she backs him toward the TARDIS, pausing only to absently snap her fingers to open the door.

" _Thorough_ shagging first," he affirms. "Arguing later."

She's kissing him now and he leans gratefully against the doorframe as River's lips and tongue make him forget he even has legs. He doesn't really remember that he has hands either, but they aren't waiting for him to. They find her bottom, palms and fingers stretching wide to grasp as much of her as possible.

Hands kneading her arse, he presses her repeatedly against his erection as they kiss, liking the way the gun strapped around her hips digs into his thigh, especially when her tongue, slow, soft, dips into his mouth again at the same time the gun's sharpness bites at him.

Not everything changes with the face.

"We _could_ do both." She's stopped kissing him to continue undressing him, and now she strips off his jacket and shirt in one go. When his arms are free, he fills his hands with her again, with the outer curves of her breasts this time, looking into her eyes like he's thinking about his answer but really just drinking her in. After a moment, he absently begins to rub his thumbs lightly over her nipples, seeing as they're there. Her lips part, just barely, like she needs to sip in a little more air, and now he's noticing the quickening rise and fall of her chest.

"Maybe next time. I'm not really in the mood to argue at the moment," he says finally, only vaguely aware of what he's saying.

She's let her head fall back, lips parted and eyes hooded under half-closed lids, so he bows his head to her and kisses wetly along the base of her throat.

"No?" she breathes. Her hands slide down to his hips, suddenly gripping hard and roughly bringing their lower bodies together again, and her hips pulse against his as they kiss, tongues sliding deliciously one over the other.

He brings his hands around to the front of her chest and slips his fingers delicately into the plunging neckline of her gown, pushing the material to either side in the process, bearing her breasts to his hands. He breaks the kiss so he can look at her, murmuring, "Far too overwhelmed by your perfections to think of a single thing that irritates me, dear," as he lifts his hands from her briefly to take in the sight of her hardened nipples, flushed a dark rose against the gold-infused cream of her skin.

She watches him staring. Then, "Besotted," she accuses smugly as he's lifting one breast and ducking his head to close his lips around the tip.

He presses his teeth lightly into the nipple in reprisal. "Bespoke," he retorts, raising his head to catch and hold her eyes, his arched brows daring her to disagree.

She doesn't, just keeps smiling fondly as she latches a leg around his hip, plucking her skirt out of the way and pulling him hard against her up-tilted center, and he can feel the heat of her through her clothes and his. "All yours, sweetie."

In Berlin in 1938 right now a River Song in her brand new face is kissing him and killing him.

"Goes both ways." His voice is gruff but his hand on her shoulder is gentle as he moves her back from him so he can bring his mouth down to her breasts again, using the space he's made to also fit his other hand between their bodies and beneath her skirt, sliding along stockinged calf, knee, thigh, the complex arrangement of sheathed knives and lacey garter, over at last bare skin and into her knickers, eager to feel the silky wetness he can never get enough of, first on his fingers, then slipping lusciously between his fingers and her clit. Decadence itself.

Her hands are in his hair, clasping his head to her chest, and on a crashing ship miles above Darillium, she's gathering her composure as she takes in his new old face and tells him he'll be doing those roots. Elsewhen, in the green light of the Pandorica in a collapsing universe, her hands are brushing his hair from his face and then patting his cheeks to call him back to consciousness.

The Pandorica is a fairy tale, but _oh Doctor, aren't we all._

Here and now, he gets his other hand under her dress and tugs her knickers down to join the other complications of her thighs.

She moves against his hand when his fingers begin to stroke her, a high breathy sound escaping her throat. One of the hands in his hair drops down to the breast he's not kneading and tonguing and he turns his head to watch her fingers clasp and pinch and rub at her nipple as he licks at the other one, his hips bucking into the back of his own hand at the sight. She's abandoned herself to it now, and River Song letting him send her to pieces in his arms is his _absolutely_ most favorite thing in all of time and space.

In response to his impatient hips, before they can escape, River digs her heel into the base of his spine, holding him there, pressed fast against his hand and her hips, with one strong leg. It's hard to move his fingers with her keeping them tight together like this but he barely notices the difficulty.

"I'm almost there . . . already," she says breathlessly, easing the pressure of her heel so she can move more freely against his fingers.

" _Yeah_ you are." His voice is very nearly a growl. He can tell by the short, sharp jerks of her hips. He can tell a thousand ways. "So _wet_ , River. So ready for me." His unruly mouth is running away from him, eager to name all the ways she's driving him mad. The sound she makes at his words is the one he secretly thinks of as a whimper, but even as he was saying them they sent his hips driving forward again, and he's seducing himself as much as he is her with this thinking aloud. No help for it. He's as helpless in his desire for her as ever, and his mouth doesn't stop. "You're going to come for me, aren't you? Any minute now. And I know what you want when you do."

Belly tight and tingling from the certainty with which he knows her desires, he eases his fingers down, replacing them on her clit with the flat of his hand, rubbing circles into her as he starts to slide his longest finger inside her, making her moan as her hips start to rock in that way he knows so well.

"Oh,just _sopping_ ," he groans as he sinks in. "And so _tight_. Right on the edge, aren't you?" he says hotly against her ear, but his finger is deep, deep inside her now, and she's already clenching around it, circling her hips counter to the circling of his wrist to rub her clit more quickly against his palm, low breathy _unh_ sdrawn out of her throat in rhythm with her hips.

" _River_ ," he gasps, almost coming against the back of his own hand from the sight and sound and feel of her, forcing himself to jerk his hips away so he doesn't.

He's going to have to calm the hell down if he's going to give her what she specified in such glorious detail, make her come over and over 'til she screams for him . . .

In 1969 in a warehouse in Florida River Song is ducking down a ladder in the floor, leaving him aroused and distracted, his mind full of the image of her hips encased in tight denim and leather and gun, of all that hair a frothy cloud on his pillow surrounding a face that is her screaming-in-ecstasy face, only it's a pale proxy of the real thing but he doesn't know it yet.

. . . before she finally tosses him onto his back and takes him at last, slides the _tightsilkywethot_ of her down onto him. And _that_ thought's not _helping_!

Her body goes loose, draped bonelessly over the arm he's wrapped 'round her, her head dropping back so the tendons in her throat pull taut. He spreads his fingers wide as he needfully runs his hand over them.

"Mhhm, _Doctor_ ," she purrs, and he feels her throat vibrating under his hand as _her_ hand fumbles blindly for his zipper.

"Stop it, don't do that," he says hurriedly, twitching his hips away. "Barely keeping it together here as it is."

 _Make me_ , she says, leaning her head against his back and spilling that wonderful hair against his neck. He'd thought it would be scratchy-stiff but it's silky-soft and seems to find its way down his collar with a will of its own. It shouldn't surprise him.

He runs his hand over her again, starting lower this time so his palm scrapes over the space between her breasts before his reaching fingers grasp at the hollow of her throat; then he drags his palm back down her chest to hold and knead one irresistible breast.

Somewhere he's lying on his back with River Song in his arms and her cleavage is inches from his face and he hadn't even noticed she had breasts when he met her before but now all he wants to do is squeeze and run his tongue between them, taste the perfume he smells emanating from that hollow, taste her skin, know everything about her that one taste could tell him. Somewhere else, he's standing behind her and looking over her shoulder, glancing down at how spectacularly her dress frames her breasts, thinking women don't _wear_ dresses that do that now, not any more, not again for a few decades yet, and imagining what she's wearing under the dress that's lifting her breasts into such perfect luscious globes, so invitingly strokable, kissable, lickable. He knows she'll taste like time—all times and all of Time—and like artron energy and like universes that never were and like the vortex smells; she'll taste like River and home and fizz against his tongue, a hint of dying and being reborn in her every kiss.

"I know," she says, lifting her head to catch his gaze and finding his zipper again in spite of his protest, drawing it down with a slow care that's setting off dark starbursts behind his eyes. "Why d'you think I'm doing it, love?"

 _I know you did,_ River Song is saying in Berlin as she drops the empty gun. _I know you know,_ he flirts back as she reaches for another.

He's gritting his teeth because her hand has wrapped around him and is easing him out of his pants and trousers.

"I want you inside me when you come."

He gasps and swats at her hand, jerking his hips away again. "Later. You promised screaming, and I've hardly begun," he says hoarsely, bending himself over the arc of her body to kiss her, careful to keep his hips away from hers.

In a wrecked ship in the ruins of an Aplan temple lit by the end of the universe, River Song looks the entire length of him up and down, taking his measure in one short glance. _Maybe when you're older_.

Her hand finds him again anyway and she hitches her leg higher on his hip and takes him into her in one quick timeless moment that tears his mouth away from hers, drives his head back, has both his hands clutching her arse to hold her tight against his hips, and makes them both moan.

" _Later_ ," she says over the sound of his panting breath, winding her arms beneath his to clasp his back.

He manages to raise his head and finds her eyes sparkling triumphantly in a face full of want. "You need _this_. Now." She grinds her hips into his. "So do I."

In the back garden of Amy's house in 2010, River tilts her head back and looks at him out of that same face. Like she's already sprawled wanton and naked in his bed and on the edge of orgasm. _Yes_ , she says again, for the third time, sending shivers through him. _He's_ the one that's naked, laid bare before her, always, while she's shrouded by the coat wrapped close around her and hiding most of her from his eyes, just the way she keeps her secrets close. A mystery, always.

 _This is my normal face._

 _Yes it is._

He's already thrusting into her in spite of himself, but his mouth is running away again, too, giving voice without his consent to how right she is. "Oh _yes_." He doesn't mind because she'll like it. River always likes hearing that she's right. "Oh _fuck_ yes." This is _exactly_ what he needs. River enveloping him. The tight, wet heat of her. Nothing but River, River everywhere. What he always needs, just River.

 _River. The only water in the forest_ , he's whispering in her ear, all but overcome with feeling and clinging to her as her hands slide over his back and her mouth moves on his throat in the dark of her cell where he's been waiting for her after Demons Run.

She brings her other leg up around his waist, the taut binding her knickers have become slicing into his stomach, and he feels her thighs tighten around him as she uses the powerful muscles of her legs to ride him. Deprived of her weight, his arms feel weirdly non-existent for a moment, but then she arches back to find her favorite angle and his knees go weak enough that his back hits the doorframe behind him, his body bowing to hers as he counters her rhythm.

He lets go of her arse with one hand to run it graspingly along her thigh, needy for the feel of the hard muscle flexing under the softness as she lifts and lowers her body. He can feel the tensing of muscle beneath the hand on her arse, too, and he digs the fingers of both hands into the tangible strength of her.

In the warehouse, River Song looks up at him over the shattered spacesuit _. Incredibly strong_ and _running away. I_ like _her._

"Yeah you do," she answers here and now, her voice mostly breath and _still_ infernally, preciously smug.

Twenty-seven or so centuries in the future, River Song is grinning as she steps onto a gravity platform in the Library while he tries to read his future in the lines of her profile.

For a moment, now, she's upright and pressed against his chest and smiling her cheekiest, happiest smile at him, then lightly kissing his mouth.

At the door of her cell, River Song is smiling that same joyful smile as she takes his face in her hands and kisses him for the first time.

On a thousand planets under a thousand suns, one of them the little yellow sun of Earth, River Song is bringing him back to life, again and again, in a thousand ways by a thousand means.

Always, at every moment in the universe, River Song is marrying him atop a pyramid.

He's chasing her mouth (isn't he always) for another, deeper kiss when her hands find his shoulders and push him hard against the doorframe as she arches back again, her hips demandingly fast now, her bones grinding bruisingly on his, her hands digging into his shoulders for leverage as her spine bows still more.

His hand on her thigh flails for balance against the pull of the legs locked 'round his hips and lands clutching spastically at the side of the TARDIS, his elbow bent backward 'round the door frame, fingers splayed on the smooth wood. He brings the other hand up and tangles it in River's hair, cradling her head, and she rests the weight of it in his palm as she fucks him senseless in the threshold of his ship, half outside in the cool damp of Calderon Beta and half inside infinity, River Song absolutely everywhere and everything.

-x-

 _Going anywhere for Christmas?_

 _I never go anywhere._

 _That's not true. You go places. I can tell. My mum always said, 'With some people, you can smell the wind in their clothes.'_

 _If she died when you were a baby, when did she say that?_

 _In my head. I'm supposed to look like her, but I don't really know. There's hardly any photographs. She hated having her picture taken. But if someone's gone, do pictures really help?_

-x-

"Find a companion," she reminds him as she's leaving the next morning—or _a_ morning; the days are short on Calderon Beta and they've never been sticklers about how to define a night. He's going to need a counterbalance before he starts running with her again. "Then," she promises, "I'll find you."

She plans to finally give a lecture, scheduled a few centuries ago, to the third-year archeology students on recognizing weeping angels in the field before rejoining the Doctor, the later one she found first, but she really _shouldn't_ do it smelling of sex, no matter how the thought amuses her, so first, a shower.

When she materializes in the lounge of her Luna University rooms, though, her husband is waiting for her.

"I know where you've been," he says immediately, leaning against the side of the TARDIS and crossing his arms smugly.

She eyes him consideringly. "You've _guessed_ ," she says after a moment. "You couldn't possibly _know_."

"But I do. I finally convinced the old girl that fair's fair, you see." He pats the door of the box. "Took a while, but she finally saw it my way."

River purses her lips to keep from smiling and crosses her own arms. "Did she now?"

"I haven't thanked you properly for being there that night yet," he says, posture unfolding, loose and open now as he flows toward her. He grasps her waist as he reaches her. "But now I can. Thank you."

"Unnecessary. I simply can't bear to watch you sulk," she says loftily.

"Hardly sulking."

"No, moping, actually. Which is far worse." Her tone is tender now, pretenses dropped.

"Oh, certainly." He leans in and busses her cheek, pausing to breathe in the smell of them that clings to her, the same way he'd done when they'd said goodbye, minutes ago for her, months for him. "You've your lecture coming up, I know," he says as he steps back, hands lingering on her hips before slipping away. "At least, I _assume_ you weren't _completely_ lying when you left earlier. Don't let me delay you. I'll just wait here patiently."

"Time machine," she says, tapping the vortex manipulator on her wrist. "And _you_ —wait patiently?" She puts what he considers an entirely unnecessary amount of disbelief into it.

"I can be patient." He lets her go and drops into a chair, crossing his legs and resting one hand over the other as if he's prepared to stay right there for hours.

"Doctor," she laughs, "you married me the second time this face saw you. You most certainly _cannot_."

"That's not a fair example, and you know it. That was for _your_ benefit. I _told_ you I didn't want to marry you."

Passing behind his chair, she pauses to bend down to kiss the top of his head. "Fine, dear. You wait here—patiently—while I have a shower and go give my lecture."

When she comes out fifteen minutes later, dressed in a tailored black suit that would be almost conservative if not for the cleavage and the red heels, he's exactly where she left him. He raises his brows innocently at her as if asking what else she could possibly have expected to find but this perfect picture of patience.

She widens her eyes in reply— _on your own head, then_ —and blows him a kiss as she crosses to the door. Then she pauses, turning back.

"You could come with me," she says.

She's half certain he'll take her up on it, or she wouldn't have said it, but she's surprised that his face actually lights up.

He's on his feet at once—and actually bouncing on his toes. "Really?"

"Well, you might learn something." She grins and holds out a hand. "Come along, husband."

 _You and me. Time and space . . ._

In the Library, River Song is taking hold of his hand and running. In Berlin, she's kissing her lives into him. In Manhattan, she's keeping her eyes on the angel who took Amy while he cries and she leads him safely away. On Trenzalore, she's speaking his name to his dying TARDIS. She's shooting him by a lake on 22 April 2011 and escaping from Stormcage on a thousand different days and carving _HELLO SWEETIE_ into a cliff at the dawn of the universe. They're getting married in all the Wonders of the World in their heydays or their ruins and always on the Great Pyramid. She's writing in her diary and giving it to Amelia on her wedding day and thumbing through it on a windswept beach and snatching it out from under his reaching hand and kissing the cover before tucking it reverently onto a shelf in their bedroom, her fingers lingering on the spine as she looks 'round and smiles at him, while in the Library she's comforting him even though she's the one who's crying: _It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for you._

Always they are beginning and ending and beginning again.

 _You watch us run._

Here and now, he takes her hand, and if, a few minutes later, Professor River Song is a bit breathless when she enters the lecture hall, no one dares to mention it, not even the man quietly settling into a seat in the back row and catching his own breath, who could tell them it wasn't the running, is never the running that leaves them breathless, only all that laughing they were doing with it.

A hundred eyes focus on her as she walks to the podium, the room quieting, but when she steps in front of it and looks up into the tiered rows of faces, her eyes land on his unerringly. She scans the rest of the room deliberately, slowly, row by row, and by the time she's done, every eye has turned to her. She smiles at the expectantly waiting faces.

"Ah, good, I see you're all paying attention. Listening carefully. Watching closely, even, so you won't miss anything. That's very good. Keep watching. Now . . . _don't blink_ . . ."

-x-

 _Time doesn't pass. The passage of time is an illusion, and life is the magician. Because life only lets you see one day at a time. . . . Imagine if time all happened at once. Every moment of your life laid out around you like a city. Streets full of buildings made of days. . . . Time is a structure relative to ourselves. Time is the space made by our lives, where we stand together forever. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It means_ life _._


End file.
